Customer stories with Cynthia Sirk
Ever wonder how one goes about marketing for not just one, but several restaurants together? Marketing pro Cynthia Sirk manages the marketing for five local restaurants using Facebook, her designing skills, and a whole lot of hard work.
We met with her for a chat to find out more.
Hi Cynthia! Could you tell me a little bit about your business and your role in it?
I have a small business where I do social media marketing. I have some clients that are local area restaurants. We primarily market on Facebook, and a little bit on Instagram. I also have a website. I create flyers for weekly specials at our restaurants. I’ve been working in this role for 10 years.
I also work with a few youth groups as volunteer work. In those groups, I post content to promote the youth group activities, such as making flyers for holidays, with different activities being offered.
What kinds of restaurants are there?
One is a Mexican restaurant, the second is also a Mexican restaurant but with a bar. The third one is a Central American/Mexican restaurant, the fourth is a Chinese restaurant, and the last is a local seafood restaurant.
They are all locally owned.
What is the target customer for these restaurants?
My target audience is just customers in my area. Most of the people that are coming to these restaurants live within a 30-mile radius.
Running promotions for multiple restaurants simultaneously
How do you manage the promotions for these four restaurants at the same time?
Three of the restaurants run a special once a week, usually every Monday. So usually, on Monday, I get the information and I go to PosterMyWall and create flyers and other promotional posts.
Then I schedule something to post at various times each day of the week.
I do different campaigns, where I’ll pick a template from PosterMyWall, and edit them.
For example, I found a template for Mexican food recently. I chose and put a different item from the menu that not everybody knows is on the menu, at the top of the template. Everybody orders tacos or fajitas but there are a few things on the menu that we want to really promote, so I put those at the top of the flyer.
I might do a whole series, of maybe ten such flyers, and post them throughout the course of a month. Then people see them on Facebook or Instagram.
The importance of maintaining separate brand identities
Do you try to diversify your marketing strategy for each of these four restaurants?
I use a different design for each restaurant.
One of the restaurants is a Chinese restaurant, so for promotions, I might use a Chinese-style graphic or theme. I recently made some promotional material for the Chinese restaurant for which I went to PosterMyWall and searched for Chinese food. I just start looking for a good template and then tailor it; I don’t use exactly what’s on PosterMyWall.
So I do have different promotional materials for each restaurant.
I change it up all the time. For example, there’s a major event coming up for Mexican restaurants called Cinco de Mayo. I’m starting to start creating some promotional content that has to do with this event.
Let’s use Cinco de Mayo as an example. How do you create promotional material for that event?
I go to PosterMyWall, and in the search engine, I just type ‘Cinco De Mayo flyer’. I’ll start browsing the templates. Some of them don’t really match the theme of the restaurant. So for example, some of them feature women dancing, we don’t want that type of thing. This is more like a family-friendly restaurant so it’s important to match the vibe.
I’ll look for something that has a cute graphic of a Mexican sombrero or taco. I will also see if it fits what I need to include on the flyer. If we’re having a promotion where we’re going to have a special on margaritas, I’ll look for something that has a margarita pitcher in it. Then I’ll start editing it.
I might delete some information that’s in the template, that doesn’t apply to me. And then I’ll add my own information, I’ll add the website, I’ll add the details of the promotion. I’ll put in my own text, I’ll upload my own logos for the restaurants.
Do you manage all of this on your own?
It’s just me. I’ve always designed the menus myself.
Facebook marketing for restaurants
How did you come to start Facebook marketing?
I soon realized how powerful and how necessary it was to be on Facebook, because I live in a really small rural area, and everybody’s on Facebook.
Especially during COVID, there were a lot of groups that were trying to promote their locally owned restaurants on Facebook. They were creating content and getting customers to connect because it was free advertising.
There were times when I paid for advertising on Facebook, but not anymore now that the restaurants have a large enough following, with several thousand followers. I post something every other day or sometimes every day. Sometimes it’s just something funny about margaritas or tequila or something else related to the restaurants.
Other times, the owner might tell me we’re going to be closed for Easter. So I go on to PosterMyWall, I just pull up an Easter flyer, I make a couple of changes, and I create a visually appealing post that I can post on Facebook, and also print out to hang up in the restaurant.
Are there people who are outside of your area who follow your Facebook pages and who might want to visit as tourists?
I know there are some people who have liked the page but don’t live in the area anymore. I only know that because sometimes I’ll get a comment on a post saying, “We miss Fiesta Cafe so much since we moved to Texas” or something like that.
How much engagement do you get across the posts? Is it the same for each restaurant?
Two of them have been around for a lot longer so they have a larger following. One of them is relatively new so I’m still working on building that up.
What does your strategy in building them up look like?
1. Closed local restaurant promotion groups
I try to take advantage of some of the closed groups we have in this area to promote restaurants especially, so I’ll post on those pages.
2. Boost ads
I have boosted ads before, for the purpose of getting more followers on my Facebook page. I don’t do that a lot anymore but I did it early on. For example, when I first started doing promotions for the Chinese restaurant page, I told the client, “I can post every day if you want. The problem is, nobody’s going to see it until you build more likes.” So you have to initially invest a little bit of money, forcing Facebook to put your posts on people’s pages. And then it just sort of snowballs from there.
3. Word of mouth
People end up seeing what other friends are posting, and reposting that. We get a lot of people commenting on our pages. A lot of it is just word of mouth.
Sometimes I’ll create a campaign that’s specifically designed to build more customers. That’s pretty much how I do it.
Are Facebook groups quite active in your community?
Yes.
I’ll give you an example. When COVID hit and all the restaurants were shut down and had to switch to takeout, it was so hard on local, family-owned restaurants. So somebody created this closed group that you could join. The only thing you could post in there were posts and promotions for local restaurants.
This page has up to 25,000 people on it now because it covers a huge area in the state of Maryland. People are constantly joining this group. And they’ll also post things like “I’m going to be in X area, I want to find a good margarita, where can I find the best one,” and dozens of people will comment and they’ll give their recommendations.
That is what helps promote my restaurant. Because people will say, “You should go to Fiesta Cafe,” or “You should go to Tequila Grill.” And then, because I have a page, I can tag it.
So I will post promotions in those groups too. So that people see that there’s a restaurant in this little town that’s locally owned and a lot of people, especially during COVID, were trying to support family-owned restaurants as opposed to the big restaurants that are franchises.
Other customers will recommend my restaurant on these pages. And that forces someone to click on the link and go to my Facebook page. And when they go to my Facebook page, they’ll see my content.
Are there similar challenges that locally-owned restaurants face in your community? Or that you’re faced with?
I would say, the biggest challenge is that people are so much more likely to critique a locally-owned restaurant than they will something like Outback Steakhouse or Olive Garden.
I mean, they’re not going to criticize a national chain. They know what they’re getting because these places have national advertising. They know what the food looks like.
One of my biggest challenges is that sometimes if my photograph of the food doesn’t look exactly like what comes out on the plate, people are like, that’s not what it looked like when I went to the restaurant. We don’t have professional photographers to go in and take a picture of every single entree. So sometimes I’ll pull a stock photo or something that I’ve bought. I think that’s the biggest challenge–that people have different expectations from smaller restaurants. That’s pretty much it.
But they’re also very supportive. The area that I live in, it’s a rural area in Maryland. They’re very big on supporting family-owned businesses and locally-owned businesses.
Examples of promotional material
Do you have anything else to share about your work?
I also use PosterMyWall for a youth group that I do social media promotions for. I create flyers and other promotional material for activities that I do with the youth group.
Do you post those designs that you make on Facebook as well?
Yes. I’ll show you an example of one.
This flyer had to have some very important information for a fundraiser that I was coordinating with the youth group.
But the color combination, and that jogger graphic at the top, was already part of the template. So I tweaked the design a bit and moved things around and added what I needed to. Then I used this for the promotion for the whole month of March.
It was so easy for me to just get everything I needed and have a template already present to work from. That’s what I love about PosterMyWall. I can always start with a template, and just tweak it.
I’ll give you another example.
This one was a Super Bowl special. The template was just the background and all those lines with the markings. I went in and put some pictures and descriptions of the menu items, to go with the Super Bowl theme.
Stay creative with your social media strategy
Do you have any advice that you would give to other small restaurant owners or family-owned businesses, based on your own experiences
Take the time to just browse PosterMyWall. Look at everything that’s out there. The creativity options are endless. And like I said, I just recently signed up for an actual subscription. I think it’s worth every penny.
I say this because I’ve been in this business for a long time, I’ve seen a lot of local, smaller family-owned restaurants. When you’re advertising, and your promotions look sharp, it makes a huge difference. People take you a lot more seriously. And they will come into your restaurant because of what you put on Facebook and other social media.
Good luck with your future plans. Thank you for sharing so many brilliant ideas with us about how you do restaurant marketing, Cynthia!
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